Don’t Frighten the White Folks. Don’t Scare the Nice Policemen

The first email to find its way to my email inbox in the aftermath of the George Zimmerman trial came from a right winger who enjoys hectoring me with stuff he thinks will rile me. Like so many of his kind, he’s a fearful racist who can’t help whining about how unfairly the world is treating guys like him, so it was no surprise that his email was entitled “Proud to be White!!!” I still get emails from him, a Wisconsin Tea Party jerk. He’s rather stupid, this guy, one of those who tend to think in slogans, write in all caps, and end each sentence with a row of exclamation points he hopes will lend substance to what he takes to be his ideas. They aren’t really ideas, however, these things he and so many others like him share among themselves. It’s just the rehashed hysteria that’s fed to them daily by those who have found a way to milk their stupidity for profit or political gain.

But if that guy wanted to provoke a reaction with his celebratory proclamation of pride in his pigmentation, then he succeeded. A wave of weary sadness settled over me, and I was brought down by the persistence of the fervent racism implicit in it. It made me sad and weary about the constant war with ignorance the human race seems to be burdened with. How anyone can be proud of pigmentation seems stupid beyond measurement.